Globalxpats – Xpats Network

Connected cars might be your future way of travel

Just imagine how good it would be if your car can talk with you and provide you information about traffic, routes to destination, can play your favorite music, etc. It would be nice right. Well how about you are passing from a street and your car talks back to you and say “hey Jack your friend Amy is having a coffee down the corner. Would you like to call her? Or would you want me to navigate you there?” Pretty nice right.

May be the automatic cars featuring driver less functions is not going to be in the day to day use so soon, but these connected cars can be the future soon. Automotive designers are trying really hard in putting smart cars that can be handled by mobile devices and wearable tech and this is the race to bring smart cars up the streets.

“Right now we are really interested in the connected car – how to converge digital and physical together, which we think is going to be the next big trend,” Toyota’s Kevin Hunter told Bloomberg news.

They are looking forward to Generation Z which is also known as the iGeneration, this is the generation of children who are not at the mature age to drive. This means they are focusing on keeping the driver behind the wheel unlike automated cars where you don’t need a driver at all. To me it sounds like more feasible solution to today’s traffic and other issues related.

Regardless of Google increasing its pilot task force of self-driving minivans, and expectations that robotic cars could be on the market by 2020, surveys proposes that many people don’t have faith in self-driving technology, and will not buy one.

As a white paper by analytics software company SAS Institute says, connected cars will leave behind population growth for the next 10 years, producing “a whole new set of services creating immediate value for drivers” – for example more accurate real-time traffic information, parking spot locator services, and location-based services.

Andreas Mai, who is the director of smart connected vehicles for Cisco Systems, says it is about safety of the users and managing resources. Mai’seducated guess is that connected car holders can save US$1,400 per year, because of low operation costs, low insurance rates, and “less time trapped in traffic which upsurges efficiency”.

An industry report by Ipsos Business Consulting expects that the connected car are going to be the next daily technology people will own.It declares that we’ll be safer – that artificially intelligent cars will significantly lessen the percentage of road accidents.

“Your connected car will be part of a network that provides a commuting service for you,” the report states. “You’ll finally be able to enjoy a stress-free, enjoyable travel experience.”

Lynn Morgan, head of Europe for Ipsos Business Consulting says:

“The advent of the connected car, connected health care and the internet of things marks the dawn of some of the most exciting times since the industrial revolution.

“Manufacturers have never experienced this level of transformation change in the past. We are already seeing the traditional players forming alliances with data companies, retailers and app developers. Some are buying technology companies as part of their strategy to get ready for the change.

“This is very exciting for the consumer who is about to witness technological developments on a large scale – developments that were considered to be in the realms of science fiction not so long ago.”

If you distress that you may never get a moment’s peace from your car’s continuousbadgering, Ford futurist Sheryl Connelly, has ananswer. She proposes the technology could take in a “do not disturb function”.